


The Changeling Child

by madame_faust



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Baby Dwarves, Durin Family, Dwarves, Erebor, Family Fluff, Folklore, Gen, Kid Fic, Pre-Smaug, Sibling Rivalry, Siblings, bb!dorf addiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-06
Updated: 2013-08-06
Packaged: 2017-12-22 14:37:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/914363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madame_faust/pseuds/madame_faust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Frerin fears that the newest addition to his family is not the blessing the adults around him claim she is. A song of lore convinces him that she might be a danger to them all.</p><p>Or, to put it another way, Frerin has some big brother jealousy and Halldóra accidentally gives him a justification for it - luckily Thrór and Sigdís know where the little guy is coming from. Come on in, it's homey in here!</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Changeling Child

The scene before the fire was one that ought to be captured in a painting of the richest ruby tones, the most glowing golden hues and darkest lapis to be hung in every dwarrow home as a source of comfort and a reminder of why they fought their bloody wars and guarded their halls so jealously. No battle waged upon the bearskin hearthrug, the only weapons that glinted were those polished by the grown dwarves on the periphery of the firelight, watching those closest to the hearth with indulgent smiles.

At the center of the image was a dwarrowdam seated in a high-backed armchair with soft curling brown hair and a beard trailed unbound over her breast. In her arms she held a wrapped bundle from which protruded a tiny, chubby hand that tangled itself in her beard and at her feet were seated four more children, old enough to sit on their own without fidgeting as she kept them enthralled with song and story.

They were not all hers, of course. Rare was it for a dwarrowdamn to boast more than three children of her own in all her bearing years and Halldóra had only two living sons to her name. Her youngest was lying closest to her on his stomach, hands propped up on his elbows while Thorin, next closest in age sat next to him, using Dwalin’s back as an armrest. Though he could be quite a serious little fellow when required, now his blue eyes were wide in excitement and his mouth hung open slightly as she sang a haunting tune.

_“Where dips the rocky highland_  
 _Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,_  
 _There lies a leafy island_  
 _Where flapping herons wake_  
 _The drowsy water rats;_  
 _There we've hid our faery vats,_  
 _Full of berries_  
 _And of reddest stolen cherries.”_

The youngest two, Glóin and Frerin, were sitting straight-backed, but the former’s dark red head kept bobbing as he tried to stay awake. It was a difficult feat for though his aunt sang of tantalizing and terrifying faeries, the wonders and horrors they guarded, it was rather late and her voice was awfully soothing. When Frerin noticed his nodding off, he thoughtfully gave his cousin a sharp poke in the ribs to rouse him. He was having no trouble at all remaining wakeful for he loved dreadful stories, even when they kept him up nights, certain that each creak of a hinge or strange sound in the darkness was some slavering beast or light-footed fae come to snatch him away from his mother and father, brother and sister.

At the moment, his brother and sister were present and accounted for, Thorin sitting upon the rug in his stocking feet, boots abandoned during play some time ago and his sister nestled quite cozily in Halldóra’s arms. She let them come to her home for milky tea and sweets many nights when their parents wanted them out of their hair. It wasn’t any trouble, she said, though she was a high-born lady of the court who had her own duties to see to. _My scrolls could sit by for a time,_ she told Thorin earlier that very evening when he asked whether or not they were being a bother. _You’re only young once._

Frerin, privately, thought his brother had asked a very stupid question. If Missus Halldóra (who was also an aunt, of a sort) thought they were a bother, she’d send them on their way or lock the door, not leave it ajar and have a kettle boiling when they came in. She even liked having Dís about, which he couldn’t fathom. She was so _small_ and she couldn’t _do_ anything. Nor could he do anything when he was with her, if he was to hold her, he had to sit very still with an arm upon the pillow because she was such a little weakling she couldn’t even keep her head up without flopping over like a dead fish.

Only she was actually even more horrible than a dead fish because dead fish could not _scream_ as she did. Morning, noon and night, if she wanted something, she wailed, if she was too cold or too hot or wet or smelly or hungry or tired or _anything_ other than sleeping she would open her toothless mouth wide and let out a piercing shriek of such volume that he could hardly believe it came from such a bitty thing.

Even their own mother found her a trial, Frerin caught her bouncing the babe in her arms early in the morning, with such a scowl on her face, he thought that Dís was going to catch a beating. When he asked if that was the case, his mother’s frown deepened even more and she replied tartly, “If I didn’t give _you_ a good hard smacking when you were a babe, I don’t think I’ll start with your sister.”

Frerin hardly understood what she was talking about. He did not remember being as small and helpless as his sister and therefore decided that he must have come into this world walking and talking and able to take himself to the necessary. Dís, he thought firmly, was an anomaly.

She wasn’t crying now though, she was yawning and Missus Dóra smiled at her and stroked her thin, fluffy hair and called her a ‘dear thing,’ as if she was something special. It rather made Frerin want to dash the infant from her arms and crawl up in her lap and have Missus Dóra tell him _he_ was dear and give him a cuddle. Only he was equally certain that if he pushed the baby he’d get a whallop; for some reason, the grown sorts were fond of her.

And so was Thorin, come to that. He was big enough and re-spon-si-ble (as their father told it) enough to pick her up without needing to sit first and have their mother or father or some other grown-up alongside him to make certain he did not drop her. Even _Dwalin_ got to hold her on his own and Dwalin was clumsy, many was the time he carried Frerin on his back and bashed him into walls going around corners or let him slip and hit his bum on the floor. He hadn’t smacked Dís into anything yet which proved something Frerin had suspected for some time: Everyone under the Mountain was fonder of Dís than they were of him.

The song ended before he’d finished his foul contemplations. Frerin only realized that Miss Dóra stopped singing when Glóin flopped over and landed in his lap, snuggling against his thigh and sleeping contentedly with his thumb in his mouth.

“Bedtime, I think,” Missus Dóra nodded with a smile at Glóin.

“Oh, _one_ more story, please!” Frerin pleaded. It was his own fault they were being sent home, if he’d kept up his watch over Glóin, he never would have fallen asleep - ah, no. He’d only stopped paying attention to his cousin because he was thinking about his sister. So, really, it was Dís’s fault and he glowered at her with a frown on his lips.

“We aren’t tired,” Thorin spoke for Dwalin and himself, glancing at his brother and younger cousin. “We shouldn’t have to go to bed just ‘cos _they’re_ sleepy.”

“I’m _not_ sleepy!” Frerin protested, shoving Glóin off his leg. The traitor didn’t even rouse, just curled up into a ball and went right on sleeping. “I’m not!”

“You are,” Dwalin retorted, like a great big hypocrite seeing as how Frerin was still sitting up and he was lying down already. “You get contrary when you’re tired.”

“I’m _not_ contrary!” Frerin argued. His voice did not wake Glóin beside him, but of course Dís would be the one to fussy and she started making little unhappy noises that Frerin recognized by now as a prelude to wailing.

“Alright, alright,” Halldóra said soothingly, though whether she sought to calm Dís or Frerin was anyone’s guess. “How about one more song before I send you back to your rooms. Any requests?”

Surprisingly, it was Balin who spoke up from the sofa, well away from their little circle. Frerin swivelled around to look at him, wide-eyed. Wasn’t he too old for songs?

“Sing the one about the changelings,” he suggested with a twinkle in his eye.

His mother laughed. “Ah, now, I couldn’t,” she shook her head. “That’s a cruel one.”

“I want to hear it!” Frerin insisted, determined to convince his family that he was old enough to stay up late into the night and old enough to listen to cruel songs. “Is it bloody? I don’t mind bloody tales.”

“It isn’t,” Missus Dóra shook her head and sighed wistfully. “It’s only very sad, too sad to hear right before you’re to sleep, it’ll give you bad dreams, dearie.”

“I won’t have bad dreams,” Frerin declared confidently. “I won’t have one, not one, I want to hear it, _please_ Missus Dóra, please please please please _please?_ ”

The dwarrowdam hesitated only a second before smiling and nodding. “Well, you’ve asked me so nicely,” she said, bouncing Dís slightly in her arms and quieting her whimpers, “I can hardly refuse.

_“The wind blows low and mournful_  
 _Through the Strath of Dalnacreich_  
 _Where once there lived a woman_  
 _Who would a mother be...”_

It was a different kind of story than Frerin was used to hearing for this time it was not a dwarfling who found himself led astray by promises of dancing and sweets and wine, but a woman of Man who made a bargain with the Queen of the Faeries because she so badly wanted a child.

_“Through the night she bargained_  
 _With the Queen and Faeries all_  
 _Who sent her home at dawning_  
 _With a babe beneath her shawl.”_

All seemed well, indeed, Frerin thought the matter was going to end quite happily with the husband and wife and their new son, he couldn’t understand why the song sounded like a dirge and why Missus Dóra would say it was cruel and sad. The reason was made clear soon enough for the baby the Man and his wife were given was no ordinary child.

_“The faeries would not answer her_  
 _The stones were dark and slept._  
 _A babe was all she’d asked for_  
 _And their promises they’d kept.”_

Dwalin rose from his place laying on the floor and scooted nearer to the fire as though he was cold. “That was an awful trick,” he muttered, unnerved by the song, the notion of a baby that would never grow up.

“Ah, but was it a trick?” his mother asked, quietly, for the baby in her own arms was sleeping. “She had only asked for a babe, hadn’t she, not a child who would grow - and that’s the lesson, my dear ones, don’t make a bargain with the faery folk, unless you’re very careful about it. For they’ll hold you to your terms, make no mistake.”

“How about Elvenkings?” Balin asked mischievously, standing over the dwarflings. Frerin hadn’t heard him come up behind them and jumped a little when he spoke.

Halldóra laughed again, “Ah, well, Elves are different - though, I won’t say it’s wise to seek the counsel of Elves, for they’ll answer both aye and nay to your questions and you’ll see no profit by it. Still, safe passage through Greenwood, provided all tolls are respected - there are worse creatures to have dealings with by far.”

“You’d not catch me making a bargain with a faery,” Fundin said and he was so loud and his footfalls so heavy that his booming voice did not startled Frerin in the least. He’d seen him come alongside him to take Glóin up in his arms. “I haven’t the wits for it.”

“Nonsense,” his wife said dismissively, rising from her own chair with Dís nestled snugly against her. “You’ve wits enough to know it’s a foolish endeavor all around. Come along, little love,” she smiled down at Frerin and inclined her head toward the doorway.

Frerin frowned when Thorin didn’t budge. “Why does Thorin get to stay?” he whinged as he slowly got to his feet, scuffing his boots against the floor.

“Because Thorin’s a wee bit older than you and can make his own way back home,” Missus Dóra informed him. “Come along, now, there’s a good lad.”

Despite her words, Frerin did not play the part of a good lad as he followed Miss Dóra and Mister Fundin first to Glóin’s home then to his own. He dragged his feet and scuffed his boots and once Mister Fundin wasn’t holding Glóin anymore he begged to be picked up with arms outstretched because he was tired of walking.

Mister Fundin chuckled, a rumble that went right through his chest into Frerin’s when he picked him up. “And here I thought you weren’t a bit tired. Or did I mishear?”

Frerin had no answer to make and hid his face in the coarse hair that formed a barrier between Mister Fundin’s shoulder and neck. He wasn’t tired, he stubbornly insisted to himself. Only his legs were and it was a long walk. The next thing he was conscious of was being handed off, like a parcel, trading one broad shoulder for another to use as a pillow.

“Thanks for taking them off our hands,” he heard his father say and a pitiful groan worked its way out of Frerin’s throat at that; Ada was waking him up and he wanted to stay sleeping.

“No trouble,” Miss Dóra replied sweetly. “They’re good as gold, I hope you don’t mind we’ve let Thorin stay a bit longer, but I’m sure he and Dwalin’ll be asleep before the hearth by the time we come back.”

“Oh, let him stay,” Ama’s hands were in his hair, briefly, loosing his braids, but they were soon gone again, probably holding his sister. “If he’s asleep and it’s not a bother.”

“Not at all,” Mister Fundin again, with his deep voice. Frerin thought he sounded like a mountain would, if a mountain could talk.

Good-nights were said and Frerin pretended to be fast asleep as his father undressed him and lay him in his bed. Why wasn’t it a bother if Thorin slept in their rooms, but he had to be returned home?

Once he had been laid to rest, he found he could not sleep again. Frerin toss and turned, pushing all his blankets off him, then scrambling to cover himself again. A light burned low upon the mantle, far above his head so there was no danger of his knocking it over and setting the room ablaze. It cast menacing shadows overhead that made him squeeze his eyes shut tight and hide his face in his pillow, then open them wide again and sit up in the darkness to watch the shadows and make certain they hadn’t moved too much or too strangely.

The final refrain of Missus Dóra’s song came to him, as he lay in the darkness, clear as if she was sitting beside him and singing again.

_The wind blows low and mournful_  
 _Through the Stratch of Dalnacreigh_  
 _Where once there lived a woman_  
 _Who would a mother be._

_For fifty years she rocked that babe_  
 _It’s said she rocks him still_  
 _The mother of a changeling child_  
 _From ‘neath a faery hill._

A rocking chair sat in the corner of the room, by Dís’s cradle. It was still, but the shadows around it flickered and danced. Frerin fancied he could see the woman now, tall and slender, her pale skin warmed by the firelight, but given no color. In her thin hands, papery and covered o’er with the wrinkles of age, she held that uncanny child, small and unchanging with luminous eyes that stared and stared and...

...Dís was awfully little, wasn’t she?

Swallowing hard, an awful thought came to Frerin’s mind all of a sudden. What if his parents made a bargain with the faeries for a baby girl. They had two sons already and wanted a girl, girls were not so common as boys - and what if they’d done it without knowing about the woman of Man who got cheated?

Silently, Frerin slid out of bed, tip-toeing to stare at his sister through the carved bars of her cot. His own little hands wrapped loosely around them and he pressed his face up against the carved stone. Beyond the bars, his sister slept on her back, a little lump beneath her quilt, dark lashes upon fat cheeks and a little bow of a mouth that was open slightly in slumber.

Was she any bigger than she had been yesterday? Or the day before that? Frerin did not think so. And he remembered that he had never seen a child so small and so useless. What if she stayed that way forever? And his parents didn’t know.

Gnawing on his lower lip, he stared between his infant sister in her cradle and his parents’ bedroom door, left slightly ajar. Should he go to them and tell them that he knew what they’d done and that they’d lose by it?

No, he thought resolutely. They might not believe him, the often didn’t when he complained about the baby. Best to get Missus Dóra, she was always right and everyone always listened to her.

Without bothering to put his slippers on or his robe, Frerin flew out of the nursery, through the sitting room and, after dragging a footstool to the front door and fishing the key to their rooms off of his father’s belt, abandoned on his usual armchair, he was soon in the corridor outside their rooms. The stone floor was cold against his bare feet and he scurried off to Mister Fundin and Missus Dóra’s suite of rooms.

At least, he _thought_ he’d found their suite of rooms. Perhaps he had gone too far, or not far enough. The tall stone door, inlaid with gold, looked familiar enough in his sleepy, panicked state and he hammered on it with both fists, hopping up and down on the balls of his feet to keep his toes from going numb.

It swung open after a few moments of pounding, but the huge dwarf who filled up the doorway was _not_ Mister Fundin, though it was someone who looked a great deal like him. Frerin took a step back with wide eyes when his grandmother knelt on the floor before him, looking bewildered and asked, “Frerin? What are you doing up this time of night, lad?”

Well, one adult was as good as any other; Grandmother was Queen Under the Mountain and her word was just as plausible as Missus Dóra’s, he was sure.

“Dís isn’t my sister,” he explained and a shiver went through him from fear and cold both. “She’s a horrible changeling and she won’t never grow up and Ama and Ada will be sore sorry when they find out, but someone’s got to tell them and make the faeries take her back.”

Grandmother cocked her head at him and made a face that wasn’t quite a smile, nor was it a frown.

“That’s a bother,” she said, untying the knot of her robe and shrugging out of it. She wrapped the yards and yards of soft warm fabric around Frerin’s shoulders and picked him up off his feet. The gesture lacked the urgency Frerin desired and she made no move to run to his parents’ and reveal his dreadful knowledge to them, but he had been rather cold and it was very cozy tucked up in her strong arms. “How’d you work that out?”

“Missus Dóra,” he replied immediately. “She sang us - me and Glóin and Thorin and Dwalin - a song about a woman of Man and how she wanted a baby and got one of the faeries, but it wasn’t a real baby as grew up just one that stayed little and Dís is little still and has been for always and I want her got rid of.”

“She is little,” Grandmother nodded, settling down in a chair before the doused fire with Frerin upon her lap. “I’ll grant you that and is like to stay that way for some time - but I’ve got to say, laddie, you weren’t any bigger when you were newly born.”

Frerin’s head snapped up and he looked positively indignant. “I was never so little as _that_ ,” he complained and a door creaked overhead.

“Who was that banging like a mason come to rework the door?” Grandfather asked, crossly.

“Frerin,” Grandmother replied without looking up. “Might find a trade in stonework at that, but he’s come to tell us he wants my namesake gotten rid of. Reckons she’s not a natural babe.”

“Oh?” Grandfather padded down the stairs and came to lean upon the arm of the chair, peering down at Frerin curiously. “How’s that?”

“She’s so _tiny_ ,” Frerin said. “And she can’t even sit up! Nor hold her head up, she just lays there like this.” And he threw himself back in his grandmother’s arms, limp with his eyes rolled back in his head, mouth open and tongue lolling out over his lips.

Thrór was overcome by a sudden coughing fit, he covered his mouth with a fist and his shoulders shook visibly beneath his thin tunic. “Does she now?” he asked with wide eyes. “Can’t say as I’ve seen her make _that_ face - goes to show I need to spend more time with the lass.”

“She’s not a lass,” Frerin reminded him. “She’s a changeling who’s too little and cries all the time and she’s got everyone under an enchantment ‘cos you like her better than me.”

That last bit he had not intended to voice aloud, but his tongue got the better of him and moved faster than his thoughts. It hardly mattered, he decided, watching his grandparents exchange a bewildered glance between them. Best that they knew all so they were aware of exactly how dangerous this supposed little dwarfling they doted on so much truly was.

“Here now,” Grandfather said, stroking Frerin’s hair. “Who likes her better than you?”

“Everyone,” Frerin huffed. “Missus Dóra calls her ‘dear’ - ”

“Missus Dóra calls _me_ ‘dear,’ she calls the whole world ‘dear,’” Grandmother reminded him. “And you as well, you being of the world.”

Frerin hesitated. It was true, he supposed. She called him ‘dearie’ before she started her song and ‘little love’ after that. If he was measuring her affection for him relative to Dís in terms of the number of endearments she applied to them, he supposed he came out the better. “Well, she’s too small,” he stubbornly maintained.

“Ah, all babes are small,” Grandfather replied, smiling. “But they grow up and so will Dís, mark me - I’ve seen many a dwarfling get from being no bigger than your sister to full-grown in seventy or so years. Your father included, believe it or not.”

He could not believe it. “Ada was _never_ a dwarfling,” he replied seriously. Then added, glancing meaningfully at his grandmother, “Not ever, he’s too big to have fit in your belly.”

She grimaced, “Now, that’s surely true, but he was small as your sister once. And so was Gróin - and Fundin too, now chew on _that_ for a while.” Seeing the disbelief in her grandson’s eyes, she went on, “I’m sister to two younger brothers and I can tell you true that Dís is perfectly natural - and it’s perfectly natural for you to want to be rid of her. Babes are dull - ”

“Oh, they aren’t,” her husband protested, but she shushed him.

“They are,” Sigdís continued resolutely. “Can’t do a thing with ‘em until they get to walking and talking a bit. Which takes a good long while, but I swear to you, once your sister’s running about, you’ll think she’s a diamond.”

Frerin looked up at his grandmother doubtfully. A diamond? A pebble, maybe, but hardly a diamond. “What if she’s a changeling?” he asked.

“We’ll drown her in a well,” Grandmother replied and his grandfather practically fell off the arm of the chair where where he was perched.

“You will not!” he protested in outrage. “As King Under the Mountain, no dwarflings will be drowned in wells. If she’s a changeling babe and destined to remain as she is, I’ll take her into my care - I think she’s sweet, running or no.”

“That’s fine,” Grandmother shrugged. “You keep an eye on the babe whilst Frerin and I have a romp together on the morrow, how’s that?”

Frerin smiled, but it was short-lived. His mouth went wide and he yawned hugely, tilting his head back and resting it against his grandmother’s chest. “Good, he replied sleepily, hardly feeling it when she rose to her feet and carried him wrapped in her own robe, out the door and back to his bed.

“Good,” she nodded, saying something over her shoulder to his grandfather that he only caught snippets of, "...and tell Dóra...frightening the wee ones..not before they’re abed..."

The rest of the night was all darkness to Frerin, he remembered nothing more when he woke to his mother rousing him, the baby in one arm and her other hand upon his shoulder. All the torches in the room burned bright and Ama was saying, “Come along, your grandmother’s wanting you, she’s got a pony ready to be saddled for you after breakfast.”

“Breakfast?” Frerin asked blurrily, rising up and finding himself looking right in his sister’s eyes. Her head was nestled in the crook of his mother’s elbow, but she was looking right at him. Dís’s toothless mouth curled up in what he was sure was a smile when she caught his eye. Despite himself, Frerin smiled back before he sprang out of bed, eager to greet the new day. As his mother went to the clothes press to fetch his tunic and trousers, he remembered there was something he wanted to tell her, something urgent, but he simply could not recall what it was, no matter how hard he thought on it.

**Author's Note:**

> The poems/songs quoted are "The Stolen Child" by W. B. Yeats, set to music my Loreena McKennitt and "The Changeling Child" by Heather Dale (I imagine Halldóra's voice is slightly Heather Dale-esque). I was writing the next chapter of _Wild Geese_ when this plot bunny snuck up on me, originally this was going to be a flashback, then it morphed into it's own story. You guys probably know by now that I can't resist kid!fic.


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